Culinary preparation of a classic brown stock (Fond brun, demi glace) is a very time-consuming process and also requires experience and skill on the part of the respective chef; precise attention must be paid to selection and quality of the raw materials. Such a stock can be kept for only a few days under refrigeration. From classic cuisine, it is known that a stock can be concentrated by slow reduction to the extent that it can be kept for several months without refrigeration; this product is termed“Glace (de viande)”. It is not surprising that a stock is prepared only rarely in private households.
Preparation of a classic culinary stock requires, in particular, bones from meat, vegetables and spices. The preparation process is complex: roasting the bones and vegetables, deglazing with wine or water, reducing, adding water, boiling for several hours, repeated addition of water, filtering off the solids and reducing.
It appears to be virtually impossible to standardize this process for purposes of industrial manufacture, since the raw materials differ in quality and even roasting on an industrial scale is not possible.
The object of the invention is to prepare a stock industrially and to provide a process for preparing a storage-stable brown stock.
Surprisingly, it has been found that it is possible to replace the individual components by standardized industrial raw materials and, by means of the inventive process, to prepare a sauce base which is comparable to a home-made one.
DD-PS 132634 describes a process for preparing a sauce base stock in which bones (cleared from meat) of a particle size between 6 and 10 mm with added fats or oils and spices are browned at temperatures between 190 and 210° C., after which, with addition of water, there follows a reducing operation to be carried out repeatedly at about 120° C. and then a cooking operation also proceeding at 120° C. This process, as a result of the roasting step, is difficult to standardize and does not lead to satisfactory organoleptic results. WO 87/01912 describes the preparation of a meat sauce base which can only be preserved by sterilization and needs to be further processed by the consumer. DE 4233762 A1 describes a process for preparing a sauce base stock from bones and vegetables, with the bones first needing to be comminuted and then, with addition of fat, browned, then the browned pieces being boiled in water for more than 10 hours, the resultant broth, after filtration, being mixed with a vegetable broth and the mixture of broths being concentrated to a solids content of 15-20%. This broth concentrate must then be sterilized, homogenized and aseptically packaged.
Against standardization of such a process is the fact that meat-bearing bones can differ in quality and the roasting operation, owing to the varying raw material quality, proceeds variably and cannot be performed to lead to uniform optimum results.
The inventive process makes it possible to prepare a stock which corresponds in quality to that of a classic stock, but can be kept for several months at room temperature, and does not require sterilization for long shelf life. In addition, the process is characterized by a significantly shorter processing time and the raw materials used are available on the market in sufficient amount and in standardized qualities.